TRENDi Maker V3 DIY 3d printer follows the tradition of small machines with 3d printed parts. It is a RepRap essentially. It uses metal rods and other vitamins but there are no additional support elements lake lase cut parts other than 3d printed supports.

Project description:

This is my small 3D printer. It is not mini (A little bit smaller, than standard Prusa). No parts for laser cutting. Basic things You need to have in mind, if You want to make it:6 mm smoth rods(relatively LM6uu bearings), M5 threaded rods for Z(2x 20mm M5 nuts), PC PSU 350W, E3DV5 (reworked) clone, Mega2560+RAMPs 1.4, Nema17 motors and Geeetech 152x152mm heated bed. My build size is XYZ 110x140x90mm. Z can be extended to 100-105 mm. X can be extended to 140 mm, if You want to lose 3 point bed leveling and to rework Y holder for heatbed.

Oct 29, 2016

Smartfriendz from France have a new open source 3d printer design. It is the Smartalu based on aluminum frame and a large print area. It looks very sturdy.

Printer description:

Taking account of reprap evolution, we are sliding to all metal construction frames, bigger printable volume and better quality.This printer is 27x26x25 cm printable size, with all modules made with 3mm aluminium lasercut and some printed parts.The structure is still our 20x20 aluminium frame assembled with bosh torx 6x16 screws and drilled profiles. We can't find a better system to assemble a solid frame.

Oct 24, 2016

Görkem Bozkurt developed an Arduino powered astronomy pointer and tracker that can be made on a DIY 3d printer.
It could probably be customized to move a small telescope or asrophotography setup.

He described his project as:

Star track is an Arduino based, GoTo-mount inspired star tracking system. It can point and track any object in the sky(Celestial coordinates are given as input) with 2 Arduinos, a gyro,RTC module,two low-cost stepper motors and a 3D printed structure.

Do keep in mind that lasers are dangerous and that there are strict laws against pointing at airplanes.

Oct 19, 2016

One way to protect your nozzle from getting dirty is to wrap it in a cover, sock, sleeve or boot and prevent all the hot nasty stuff sticking to it. E3D released their silicone sock for Vulcano nozzles but someone found a way to make a DIY version.

Ubermeisters used 3d printed model of the nozzle and made a mold around it and than used some high temperature silicone mixture to produce the final cover. All steps are photographed in detail.

Thingiverse user "snrk" aka Per from Sweden shared his method of converting .GPX data from a GPS in 3d printable files. He used Processing to with additional libraries to parse the files and translate the data to points in a voxel array.

Here is the example of 3d printed run data recorded on a GPS device in .gpx format:

Oct 17, 2016

What if you could carry your 3d printer with you as a small bag? What if 3d printers were everywhere? Researchers at HPI explored this possibility with actual hacked 3d printers and 3d printing pens to test the implications on everyday life.
It would basically give you magic power to repair and replace everything on the spot with incredibly low cost. Sure, we are not there yet, but technologies and concepts are slowly converging to this point.

Here is a detailed talk by Thijs Roumen about the entire concept, the research conducted and the results:

Here is a video focused on the mobile printing process:

They used modified M3D machine which was cut down to more compact size of 9cm in hignt, equipped with a UDOO control PC computer, shoulder strap and a battery. I expect that someone will make simillar open sourced machine soon.

Bumpy is a minimalist DIY MP3 player with 3d printable case developed by Matt Keeter. It plays MP3s from SD card and it's open sourced. I've been thinking about getting rid of my smartphone, buying a dumb-phone and using stand-alone MP3 player and this looks very interesting.

The case is printed on Formlabs machines, but you could also probably do it on other 3d printers:

Oct 16, 2016

Youtuber "NerdVille" from UK made this 3d printer enclosure with nice iris mechanism on top that enables easy movement of filament tube and printhead. The heat doesn't escape and it improves the print quality.
The video also features design phase so it is extra interesting. The final version of eclosure is laserut from acrylic sheets.

ONO is a novel approach to 3d printing and it uses your smartphone as a light source for curing of daylight resin. It should cost just 99$.
DLP 3d printers that use visible light from an LCD panels are getting more developed and should lower the price.

Here is Adafruit Industries talking with ONO crew about their machine:

Oct 15, 2016

Ricard Ferro developed the DIY smart glasses based on Raspberry Pi Zero. They have a 3d printed frame that holds everything together. Interesting project with many possible applications, hopefully it will be developed further and get a community of contributors.

Here is a video showing OCR recognition:

Project description:

At a lose for words? Can't describe an object? PiZero SmartGlass can help you with that by using image recognition tech. Make your own smart glasses easily with the Raspberry Pi Zero! Affordable and easy to build, retro-wearable 3D Virtual Stereo Digital Video glasses are around $75 along with the Pi Zero. This display uses composite video to connect the Pi Zero's video out pins and are easily customized. There are many applications for image recognition, which allows computers to translate written text into digital text. The PiGlasses can help with the field of machine vision, recognizing people and objects. Add a battery pack and your PiGlasses are ready to go!

MIT CSAIL scientists developed Foundry CAD / CAM software which they call "Photoshop for 3d printing". It looks amazing with many advanced options.

The main question will be open sourced and available for wider 3d printing community? I strongly support that all software developed by public funding be released under an open source license.
One of the articles claim that the developer, Kiril Vidimče, wants to integrate it into the workflow of existing CAD systems. We will see ...

Oct 11, 2016

Marcin Jakubowski is developing a set of machines that can be made to restart the civilization and is making them available under open source licences. It is very interesting project with many already available designs.

Oct 6, 2016

Hristo Borisov developed and published a set of 3D printable socket and switch modules that are controlled by ESP8266.
ESP8266 is very interesting piece of electronics since it is very small, affordable (some 4 USD) and powerful since it has WiFi and can be used as Arduino.
With this project you can control your electric devices via WiFi remotely and setup a simple DIY smart home project for a fraction of a price of commercial proprietary solutions.

Sockets are fully 3D printable and are of standard European "Schuko" type, designed in Autodesk Fusion 360. Design is modular so you could probably easily change it to any other socket standard.

There is even an iOS app for remote control of modules. Project is also open source so they get extra pints in my book.

Oct 5, 2016

Here is a really big DIY 3d printer with two 3d printed hobby rockets. It looks like it is some 2 meters tall has some 1 square meter build surface.
Supporting structures appear to be CNC routed from some type of wood.

Update:

This machine is the "Printzilla" made in fablab Moscow by Michail Michalin and Vladimir Kuznetsov. It has 0,8 x 0,8 x 2,0 meters printvolume.
Here is the facebook video of it in action:

Oct 4, 2016

Here is a simple DIY fume extractor for yor 3D printer developed by Bing Lastrilla from Philippines that he installed on his Flash Forge Creator Pro.
It uses a few 3d printed parts, a simple plastic box, computer fan and a flexible hose (he used a washing machine hose) to lead out the fumes.